Visiting Tampines again brings back so many old memories; memories of going to my old market, buying lanterns, of rickety school buses traipsing through tampines st 81, of the swimming pool with its large holes, of long rides visiting the piano teacher; i was young then, and earnest about the world; it was a nice kampung, it was home.

nostalgia brought me to go back towards the west (where i now live) using pretty much the whole stretch of east coast road. i remember my parents having plenty of friends who stayed in nice little houses along upper east coast road, all the church friends who owned houses there; i remember nice little family outings to katong to eat. or travelling in the car along the ECP; in fact i can still recall it very clearly: tanjong katong road, marine parade, marine vista, siglap road, bedok, bayshore, tampines! home!

oh well.

those days are gone i guess.

the west is very different. less neat. it's not quaint like the east is. everything is sprawling and vast and the roads curve here and there and there's plenty of forests and trees. the houses are much bigger. there are hills everywhere. it's great. but it's not like the east is.

i tried the most yummilicious cheng tng at bedok corner (ye lai xiang) which i will post about in my food blog, but it is really the works. absolutely amazing.

maybe we shouldn't have moved over to the west; we were happy in the east. sigh. my parents had real friends who treated them as friends. relocating, trying to find their roots again in the west, isnt' so easy. it just isn't the same.

sometimes when they say family lasts but friends don't, i'm not so sure; family is important, yes, but how can you say that long term friends aren't really like your family? isn't there just e same bond?

anyway the remaining of this post is going to be very technical but since blogging iz just for fun i will shout it out anyways;

many people ask me "how do you get so good at directions" and all that, and i explain to them that it's really quite simple. so i'll share with you a little secret.

singapore is a ridiculously easy city to navigate, really. because, just like all the other cities, the roads are all either north-south (longtitudes) or east-west (latitudes). so if you know how the roads are ordered, you can pretty much travel anywhere.

North-south roads (they travel from the NORTH to the south). so here's how they are ordered, starting from West moving towards East.

(Jurong)

Lim Chu Kang Road - Jln Bahar

Jurong Town Hall Road - Bukit Batok Road

Clementi Ave 6 (connecting the two highways)

Clementi Road - Upper Bukit Timah Road - Woodlands Road (to the causeway)

Buona Vista Road (in e south); BKE (in the north)

Farrer Road - Lornie Road - Upper Thomson Road - Sembawang Road

Thomson Road - Marymount Road - AMK Ave 6 - Lentor Avenue

CTE

(In the city):

Eu Tong Sen Street / New Bridge Road moving upwards: Hill Street / Victoria St;

(In the east)

Tanjong Katong Road - Paya Lebar Road - Upper Paya Lebar Road

Jln Eunos - Eunos Link - moving upwards to Hougang

(EAST WEST ROADS)

Moving from SOUTH to NORTH:

[in the West]

West Coast Highway - ECP

AYE - ECP

Jln Bukit Merah (not that long)

Commonwealth Avenue West - Leng Kee Road

Holland Road

Bukit Timah Road [links to Clementi Rd - upper bukit timah rd] - Rochor Road

PIE

SLE

(In the East)

(from the ECP)

Mountbatten Road - East Coast Road - Upp East Coast Rd

Sims Avenue - New Upper Changi Road - Upp Changi Road East

PIE

TPE

[moving north]:

Braddell Road - Bartley Road

AMK Avenue 1 - Boundary Road

AMK Avenue 3 - Houngang Ave 2

In fact, there are even diagonal roads: the most prominent being:

Upper Serangoon Road, moving diagonally from serangoon up till pongoll.

And there are ring roads:

the most famous and important being Queensway - Farrer Road - Braddell Road - Bartley Road - TPE

so if u know all this, you can find ur way around singapore+)

guaranteed.